What is Theatre?

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Introduction

Jan-Feb 2001 What is Theatre? At the beginning of the unit I didn't really know what theatre was, I suppose I had never really thought about it before, and had just assumed that by theatre people just meant the plays they performed or went to see. Throughout this topic though, I have learnt that its not just being on stage and playing your part, it how you play your part and the work and effort that goes into a performance and the exploration of the character you are playing. As we progress through the unit my perception of the word theatre changed greatly as I realised how much work it really was. The areas we worked on during this topic were, concentration, to do this we interrogated a member of our group. We looked at stage fighting and created a piece of drama involving this, we studied body language and character this is important so that the audience knows exactly what is going on and who you are. We also looked at movement, voice and ritual, which we explored in the form of a funeral. ...read more.

Middle

During this I found it quite tricky not to fidget, as I didn't know what to do with my hands and feet. I found myself preoccupied with things in the room that I had never noticed before as it was easier to focus my attention on something other than the people I was talking to. When working on another piece of interrogation, I worked with Holly, Hannah, and KC. The aim of the piece was to try and brainwash KC, we asked him a series of simple questions that anyone should know the answer to and if he answered the question correctly he would be punished by having his fingers chopped off. The more he got the questions right and the more he was tortured the more he panicked and the quicker the questions got and the more intense the scene became, until he finally cracked and started answering the questions with the wrong answers, the brainwashing had been successful. I think that this was an effective piece of drama because it showed the real strain on KC as the situation became more intense and out of his control. ...read more.

Conclusion

I think that this is the area I personally need to work on, and concentrate hard when we revisit it. From this topic I have learnt, that everything has a lot more effort and preparation put into it than it would first seem. When playing a role you have to think about every aspect of the character's life and how they would react to the different situations they are presented with. It takes time and effort to fully develop your understanding of a character and until this is done you cannot play the part to the best of your ability. It may seem like a great deal of work to put in but once done it makes the understanding of the character much easier. You have to think about a whole range of things to do with how you present yourself to the audience, such as body language, tone of voice, posture, emphasis, pace of delivery of lines and eye contact. It is also important to remember that being still is sometimes as important as movement. This topic really Opened my eyes as to what really goes into creating a piece of theatre. ...read more.

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